Any company would destroy the competition if they could. Gold also acts as a barometer of angst and fear, or used to. It kind of speaks truth to power when power says everything is fine although it's not. It's a fink, a canary, a rat. Again, it used to do that, not lately. But it may just make a comeback in that department.

They will raise when POG gets a spine. If. POG action today is intriguing though. FED's statement is basically that a rate increase of almost nothing is closer, so same message as always. Of course it's closer, that's the thing about time passing, everything is closer with each passing minute, including yours and my death. In the past, POG would soften before a FED event and then get crushed for an encore following the event or statement or whatever. That didn't happen today. It tried, but bounced back. $USD surged but POG held despite what was probably the usual onslaught of sellers. I a going to watch it tonight, gold I mean. I think it may surge in Asia. Gold will zoom when the FED finally loses credibility. That happens when people finally look at the Kafkaesque nature of this impending rate hike.

Lot's of old time conservatives will be voting for her because they don't recognize the GOP any more. Dems generally and WitcHillary specifically are further right than almost any GOP from 10 years ago, so makes sense. They will be holding their noses and what they should do is spoil their ballot, but they won't.

As long as they have gold under a hammer and succeeding, they won't raise rates, just talk about it a lot. At some point, the world won't believe them anymore and gold will rise and escape their control, and that's when they will raise rates.

And it worked out well for them too. As the Chinese gov holds the door open while the recent influx of retail get the hell out with a loss to lick their very deep wounds, they will not be looking to re-invest in the stock market any time soon. They might just turn their faith back to the yellow metal.

Refining and selling gasoline is what is keeping big oil in the black. Oil has come down a solid 50% from last summer. Gas was $1.35-$1.50 / litre then, now $1.10 or so. Cost of refining does not go down, but surely the cost of THE raw material is by far the major component. Free markets ended while we were sleeping, during the so called GWOT.

It's priced in USD, the only currency that matters and it only gets stronger while everything else dies a slow death. If anybody has any doubt that the Euro will reach parity by year's end, they are a lot less cynical than I am. What does this do to the so-called 'on-going recovery" in the US? It destroys it of course, but it makes American oligarchs richer than they had ever imagined was even possible 5 or 6 years ago. Gives them, and US corporations, and the banks that spawn the stuff even more malevolent power over us and the rest of the world. I am no gold bug, the stuff is useless practically speaking, but the idea of gold as a currency and store of wealth was at least a kind of global level playing field. I never saw it that way before. I thought perhaps we had finally outgrown the stuff, but we haven't. Only greed has replaced it, the kind that makes gold fever look like a runny nose.

It's early yet, unless something has changed, and we are constantly reminded that nothing has, which has been about 98% correct to date (grudging kudos to that dude), then tomorrow will see another $20-30 drop in the yellow metal. Why? Gold used to be the way, among other things, people expressed their fear and angst about how things are. But that valve has been shuttered. Maybe they prefer riots.

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